The document analyzes Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine, describing how it uses postmodern techniques like animation, archival footage, and provocative interviews to reinforce Moore's thesis about America's gun culture in an engaging way. It discusses how Moore personalizes the issues, using his own experiences, in a cinéma vérité style to encourage empathy from audiences. It also notes how Moore juxtaposes interviews with people like a weapons manufacturer spokesperson and Charlton Heston to bolster his arguments through irony and extremist views. Some critics argue Moore's very subjective methods can undermine his message by feeling manipulative.

1. Bowling For Columbine : postmodern cinéma vérité?
Karen D Scott
Moore hammers home his opinion utilising such a variety of
techniques, it’s hard not to be seduced by his thesis if you
aren’t convinced by interview alone, well, we’ll throw in an
animation just to re-enforce the point.
Often using ‘found footage’, Moore appropriates archive
material such as the promotional video for Littleton and an old
advertisement which features toy guns. Whatever, they
inevitably, ironically, support his ideas.
Scratching beyond the surface of the (visually) captivating
narrative, which purports to explore America’s fascination with
the gun, students studying documentary will find this a valuable
resource, as many of the traditional documentary addresses
are easily identifiable.
Moore himself has successfully managed to become a media
personality, who is able to utilise his status to explore issues
which concern him. Through his previous work (books,
television series and films), the audience are encouraged to
acknowledge his status as a source of ‘truth’, a filmmaker who
doggedly tracks down those who stand in his way not that he
always succeeds in getting the illusive interview that seems to
dominate his quests.

2. The primary protagonist, happens to be Moore himself,
introduced, after an opening montage sequence which
ironically explains how on the morning of the Columbine
shootings, America was behaving in ‘typical’ fashion.
The mix of voice over, non-diegetic music and the visual
juxtapositioning of a series of disparate images, immediately
positions the film on the boundary of how we expect a
documentary to address its audience. The postmodern, MTV
aesthetic, which is clearly at work here, rather than
undermining the film, draws the viewer.
In this way the work transcends the expected (documentary)
boundaries, combining both entertainment and factual
discourses, which can lead students conveniently on to
exploring how reality is constructed. The traditional codes and
conventions employed to signpost that a text is ‘documentary’
are combined with fictional aesthetics and through an
examination of the formal properties.

3. As an auteur filmmaker, one of the defining features of
Moore’s work is the way he personalises the situation, and
utilises a range of techniques to encourage an empathetic
response from the audience. This is not expository, third
person filmmaking, rather it’s cinéma vérité, with everything
coming back to how it affects Moore.
The idea of vérité, which combines direct, provocative action
from filmmakers who precipitate situations in order to eek-out
some form of ‘truth’, fits rather comfortably with what we have
come to expect from his work. Considered by some as the exact
opposite of direct or observational cinema, this interaction
forms an integral part of the finished text, which serves to
reinforce the subjective nature of the finished work.
Straight after the opening montage we are presented with
some home movie footage of Moore as a child with a voice
over explaining his relationship to guns. We are told where he
was born, where he grew-up, and all the incidents highlighted
in the film are related back through a subjective narrative
based around his experiences, and how they relate to him.
The ‘bigger picture’ is personalised, and Moore presents
himself as a socially concerned ‘everyman’ he is not academic
(or is not perceived to be), and he slouches his way through the
film, often on camera, in his trademark jeans, t-shirt, and
baseball cap. This man could be you or I, fighting what we feel
are the social injustices of the world, making his case all the
more convincing through clever use of mise en scène.

4. In a sequence beginning twenty minutes into the film, Moore is
in Littleton, Colorado, interviewing Denny Fennell, a home
security expert. We are taken through ‘typical’ home security
issues, and the interview is concluded on the front lawn, in
bright sunshine. At the end of the interview Fennell breaks
down whilst discussing the Columbine shootings. We
immediately then cut to Evan McCollum, public relations
spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, the largest weapons
manufacturer in America, also located in the Littleton area.
Evan McCollum, public relations spokesperson for Lockheed
Martin is dressed in shirt and tie, and placed, rather
conveniently, in front of what appears to be a missile with ‘US
Airforce’ emblazoned down the side. The environment is
sterile, helping to support the idea that the arms manufactures
are somehow ‘distanced’ from the outside, day-to-day world
which Moore is investigating. As such, when he suggests that
the company may be complicit in helping to create the
environment which led to the Columbine shootings, its hard to
believe McCollum as he categorically denies that this may be
the case.
In a montage sequence which features international atrocities,
sanctioned by the US, the non-diegetic soundtrack featuring
Louis Armstrong singing It’s A Wonderful World concludes, the
final image we see is the second plane hitting the twin towers
on September 11, 2001.

5. Perhaps one of the reasons why the cinéma vérité approach is
not utilised as much in mainstream contemporary documentary
as other techniques, relates back to what we expect from a
documentary and how we expect to be addressed.
The incredibly subjective nature can also work to undermine
the main argument, as the viewer feels manipulated into
expressing certain responses. Always quick to make sure the
‘opposition’ has a voice, what Moore then does is create a
clever juxtaposition, an ironic soundtrack or just includes
extremist views which all help support his argument, leaving
little space for the audience to weigh up both sides.
Early on in the film the second main protagonist is introduced --
Moore’s ‘target’ for interview. This is none other than the
legendary Charlton Heston; film star, head of the National Rifle
Association, and fellow Michiganite. As the narrative develops
Heston is announced as a figure of ridicule, and it appears
justifiably so.
As the film concludes with Moore leaving the photograph of
the dead six year old child, Kayla Rolland, on Heston’s patio,
you cannot help but feel that this last act of petulance
undermines what we expect from Moore, and it leaves for an
uncomfortable feeling. It may be that his politics are admirable,
but his methods are not.